


please play reward

by KelpietheThundergod



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anxiety, Broken Heart, Dean's Michael-trauma, Dean-Centric, Depression, Episode: s15e05 Proverbs 17:3, Episode: s15e06 Golden Time, Exhaustion, M/M, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Post-Episode: s15e05 Proverbs 17:3, Scooby-Doo - Freeform, Triggering of Trauma, and, episode coda, in the sense that Dean doesn't know if Chuck is watching him or not, self-care, specifically, there's mention of, which results in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-17 22:48:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21651025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KelpietheThundergod/pseuds/KelpietheThundergod
Summary: After some rummaging around, Dean finds Sam's stash of stupid travel mugs. The coffee goes in one of those, and then Dean stuffs the box of Cocoa Crunch under his arm and ninjas it back to his room on silent feet.Cartoons are playing and it's still warm under the covers. Dean burrows himself under them, burrows himself deep.
Relationships: background Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 31
Kudos: 139
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	please play reward

__

_crying_

_yearning_

_mind disturbing_

_looking back_

  
  
  


That night, Dean turns on the TV in his room and doesn’t turn it off again. He’s barely aware of what’s on the screen, just that it’s voices that he knows and melodies that lulled him to sleep as a kid. 

Back then, he slept on mouldy couches in front of the TV. Sometimes with Sammy’s head in his lap, other times with nothing but a loaded shotgun and a half empty bag of chips to keep him company. 

With the volume down, he curls up on his memory foam, wearing his softest pair of flannel jammies. He falls asleep on his back, and wakes on his side and with his cheek aching. There’s some blood on his sheets. 

Standing at the sink, he washes his face. One of the cuts has opened back up. The water stings, and Dean’s poking fingers sting more. With a frown and a headshake, he decides to leave it alone. Ducking away from his reflection, he grabs his robe off the hanger. Ties it _tight_ around his waist. After rummaging through his drawer for his thickest socks, he stomps his feet into his slippers. 

He forgoes a shower, only takes a piss, then beelines it to the kitchen. After some rummaging around, Dean finds Sam's stash of stupid travel mugs. The coffee goes in one of those, and then Dean stuffs the box of Cocoa Crunch under his arm and ninjas it back to his room on silent feet. 

Cartoons are playing and it's still warm under the covers. Dean burrows himself under them, burrows himself deep. 

Some indefinite amount of time later, there's footsteps from the hallway. Quickly, Dean mutes the TV. Sam knocks on his door, "Hey, you up yet?" Dean doesn't make a peep. A couple more seconds, and Sam huffs and gives up. The remote in hand, Dean waits until he can't hear his little brother's gigantic feet anymore, and it's almost like a fun game. 

_"I sometimes think you would rather eat a pizza pie than solve a mystery,"_ Velma says. 

_"Okay, then. Vote for pizza pie,"_ Shaggy answers, raising his hand. 

_"Pizza pie!"_ Scooby says, raising a paw, and Dean echoes him—"Pizza pie!", raising his cereal box at the TV. 

They _get_ him. 

Hidden in his room, with a blanket up to his ears and sitting so close to the TV it's all he can see, it's almost like he's there with them. 

The next time Sam checks on him, Dean doesn't care enough to mute the TV. Sam sticks his head in, then frowns. "Dude, are you okay? What are you doing?" 

Dean thinks it's really obvious what he's doing, so he just stuffs more cereal into his mouth and, chewing, turns Sam's question around on him, "What're _you_ doin'?" 

Sam scrunches up his nose. "Gross. And I was—" He points behind himself with the hand that's holding a couple of files, then proceeds to say boring stuff so Dean tunes him out, turning back to the TV. 

He's taking a break from his Scooby marathon to watch My Neighbor Totoro, but he's kind of regretting it. Totoro is big and strong and protective and _dumb_ , and it spreads an ache in Dean's chest, an ache of longing. 

"Were you even listening to me?" Sam sounds annoyed. 

Dean stuffs more cereal into his mouth and shrugs. "Busy, Sammy," he says, keeping his eyes firmly glued to the screen. 

From the corners of his vision, he can see Sam giving him a disapproving look. A _Dean, you're forty. Act like it,_ look. Finally though, he seems to get that Dean has no interest in even pretending to be invested in whatever boring thing Sam's doing and leaves him and the TV alone again. 

Dean makes it until that point where the little girls, not knowing their mommy is pregnant, think she's in the hospital because she's got a deathly illness. They cry, inconsolable, and Dean switches back to Scooby, a lump in his throat. 

_“Do you think that twenty was planned to throw us off?”_

_“Why?”_

_“To make us think nothing fishy was going on in the theater.”_

_“And we would never think of going back.”_

_“I get it. But now what do we do?”_

“We go back,” Fred and Dean say. 

Dean’s eyes burn. He burrows deeper into the covers, cold all over. Briefly, he thinks about sneaking out to get a hot water bottle. He doesn’t want to leave his room though. 

The gang goes back to the theater. Dean lies still and follows them with his eyes until everything else goes away again. 

>

_"He's gone!"_

_"It must have been our imagination."_

_"Well, that was the first time I ever heard mine!"_

He switches position often, but the cuts on his sides are irritated no matter how he lies. His cereal is almost gone. 

Even with the comforter on top of the blanket, it’s lonely in his bed. 

Stupidly, he tries to pick up where he’d last stopped watching El Zorro, la espada y la rosa, but the moment Zorro and Esmeralda are about to become intimate, he has to hit stop on the remote. The TV freezes on their exposed bodies, the camera mid-way through a slow pan of their entwined forms, all golden skin and subtle lighting—spying on them without their knowledge. 

His heart racing, Dean takes a deep breath. The slimy, sick feeling he’s been trying to escape all day flares, refusing to budge. 

His clothes aren’t even dirty, but he digs fresh ones out of the drawer. _He_ isn’t dirty, but all the way to the showers, he hears Lilith’ voice, _pervy obsession with you_ ; feels the way she looked at him, _I put you to sleep, I was supposed to seduce you_. 

Like Dean’s done since he found out _He_ has been watching them all this time, he showers facing the tiles, a hand over his crotch to cover it, a big towel at the ready. Goosebumps rise on his skin despite the steam, the way he scrubs himself down hurried and perfunctorily. The soap stings in his cuts but it barely even registers.

 _Can't escape, can't escape_ is wrapping a fist around his heart, painfully squeezing. It's goes on until the world is washed in gray tones and what was pain before becomes numbness. With shaky hands, Dean turns the water off. 

He dresses in layers. The pants with the hot dogs on them help; it's something he'd have worn as a kid, back when he was so small still he was barely aware that he had a body and a mind that bad stuff could be done to. 

In his room, Dean shuts the door and gathers the blankets around himself. He squints at the TV to blur the vulnerable, voyeuristic images, and fumbles with the remote until they're gone and Scooby is back. 

The gray is replaced by color, the flesh-colored smudges by familiar outfits that have stayed the same and will stay the same forever. Breathing a sigh of relief, Dean settles, the remote cradled in his palms. 

The Ghost Clown is hypnotizing Daphne. Dean knows the words by heart. _"You will pay attention for a time… And soon your thoughts shall all be mine. Watch the pretty coin of gold, and you will do what you are told."_

A shiver runs up Dean's back. He wraps himself tighter in his bedding, until almost nothing of him is visible anymore. Scooby and the gang keep on being innocent and pure, and Dean mouthes along to their words, and presses play, and play, and play. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> [Moment by Su Yun Ying](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5XjLbMTo38) \- i know probably no one every clicks these links but this song is so powerful and it massively inspired me
> 
> Scooby-doo quotes are from season 1 episodes 8-10
> 
> El zorro, la espada y la rosa is a Spanish-language telenovela based on Johnston McCulley's characters
> 
> i know, i know, i keep writing about the same stuff but i've just been having so many feelings about how dean has been surrounding himself with all these safe, childlike things. if you liked this fic please leave me a comment and [reblog it on tumblr!! ](https://cuddlemonsterdean.tumblr.com/post/189438836886/please-play-reward-dean-centric-post-15x05)


End file.
